To this I say boo fucking who. I realize we're dealing with shades of gray, but not being able to afford something just doesn't really qualify as a reason to pirate it. Particularly given the amount of time you talk about playing just WoW (never mind all this other stuff) and my initial reaction is to get a freaking job, and stop with all that justification nonsense. It's one thing to be willing, able, and even attempt to pay, but no one will take your money, but just saying "well I can't afford that so I'll pirate it", to me is totally different and not cool.

A Music CD sells in NZ for $30 to $40. Just buying one band's albums would cost someone a couple hundred dollars.

It's not a huge surprise that basically everyone I know in NZ just downloads music instead of paying for it - they'd rather download the music and then buy T-shirt or two or go to a Concert. Or they'll wind up downloading the earlier albums and buy the new album when it comes out.

If it wasn't marked up horribly just because it's being sold down here - people would pay retail value. Because it's marked up that badly - people can't afford it and pirate it.

To this I say boo fucking who. I realize we're dealing with shades of gray, but not being able to afford something just doesn't really qualify as a reason to pirate it. Particularly given the amount of time you talk about playing just WoW (never mind all this other stuff) and my initial reaction is to get a freaking job, and stop with all that justification nonsense. It's one thing to be willing, able, and even attempt to pay, but no one will take your money, but just saying "well I can't afford that so I'll pirate it", to me is totally different and not cool.

A Music CD sells in NZ for $30 to $40. Just buying one band's albums would cost someone a couple hundred dollars.

It's not a huge surprise that basically everyone I know in NZ just downloads music instead of paying for it - they'd rather download the music and then buy T-shirt or two or go to a Concert. Or they'll wind up downloading the earlier albums and buy the new album when it comes out.

If it wasn't marked up horribly just because it's being sold down here - people would pay retail value. Because it's marked up that badly - people can't afford it and pirate it.

So because you can't afford that car, jacket, or watch, that justifies your stealing it?

I call major BS here.

People show a vast willingness to steal virtual goods because they are virtual. Software, music, photos, movies, it doesn't matter. They justify it because those evil corporations are "rich".

Yeah....

Even if a CD's worth of music would cost $2.50, people would still steal if it's online, because virtual goods should be "free" in their minds. That's what this really is about.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

To be fair, people in NZ don't think about it being free becasue we have no unrestricted unlimited broadband plans down here. We pay for our bandwidth. Granted, it's not that much per song or per album, but it's certainly not free.

I don't generally buy CDs. I do buy music on iTunes. CDs are absurdly expensive down here.

I look forward to the days when you can walk into a music store and download your purchases onto a memory stick. I don't see any reason for CDs to exist, with their jewel cases and pamphlets and printing and production costs.

Having said that, I can pay $30 for a CD, or $22 do download the same album from iTunes. If the justification for why CDs are so expensive in NZ is the transportation, one has to wonder why there is only a $6 difference between the CD and the download. I suspect the online prices are compensating for an expected amount of sales lost to piracy.

Koatanga wrote:To be fair, people in NZ don't think about it being free becasue we have no unrestricted unlimited broadband plans down here. We pay for our bandwidth. Granted, it's not that much per song or per album, but it's certainly not free.

I don't generally buy CDs. I do buy music on iTunes. CDs are absurdly expensive down here.

I look forward to the days when you can walk into a music store and download your purchases onto a memory stick. I don't see any reason for CDs to exist, with their jewel cases and pamphlets and printing and production costs.

Having said that, I can pay $30 for a CD, or $22 do download the same album from iTunes. If the justification for why CDs are so expensive in NZ is the transportation, one has to wonder why there is only a $6 difference between the CD and the download. I suspect the online prices are compensating for an expected amount of sales lost to piracy.

I don't dispute that music seems overpriced. The iTunes CD is priced where it is due to demands by the music labels. At the same time, there is a lot of overhead in the music industry.

What would be interesting to see is what would happen if a new music label started up, offering only digital distribution of music. I wonder what their overhead structure would be in that case, and if music prices would then be "reasonable".

Problem is that still won't stop piracy.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

degre wrote:I love BBC because everything they show on TV they also show on their BBC iPlayer, in high definition.

Not available outside UK, unfortunately.

I can't help but wonder how much piracy would decrease if they'd just get rid of the stupid restrictions and gave access to everyone, rather than restricting it by country.

IIRC ESPN is one of the most expensive cable networks, with every cable/dish subscriber who gets ESPN paying $3 from their monthly bill directly to Disney.

Thus, I have to assume that BBC America is less than that. Let's say $2 a month, plus the revenue from my eyeballs catching quarter-second glimpses of their commercials as I skip over them.

I would *happily* pay $3 a month more on my Netflix streaming subscription to be able to stream BBC America content the day it airs. Wouldn't that be awesome? And they can embed commercials in it too if they must; the time to rebuffer the stream would mean that I wouldn't bother skipping one 30 second commercial most of the time.

For a while I had a higher tier of dish tv just for BBC America. If I could drop that and save ~$10/month I'd happily give a chunk of that directly to the BBC.

Fivelives wrote:When iTunes was first released, Jobs said "$.99 per track. Period."

We saw how long that lasted. I've seen tracks go on iTunes for $1.99 and up.

But he had to compromise on the DRM or get sued. So he compromised and included DRM. Then, later, when the labels tried to demand higher costs for their latest hyped-up auto-tuned artists, he came back and said "Okay, but you gotta drop the DRM". And they did.

Overall I'm happy now with variable pricing and no DRM. It was an awful hassle to have to burn every song to CD then rip it again and compress as an extra-high bitrate MP3 just so I could archive a non-DRM version. Besides I tend to buy now from Amazon anyway since I chose long ago to standardize on MP3 for archiving over other formats.

halabar wrote:What would be interesting to see is what would happen if a new music label started up, offering only digital distribution of music. I wonder what their overhead structure would be in that case, and if music prices would then be "reasonable".

They used to be "pay what you want" for downloaded albums. Now it seems they are subscription only, but while subscribed you can still download as much as you want permanently. And they "work directly with artists, not major labels" which sort of makes them a label, sort of.

In truth I think the future of music doesn't involve the archaic term "music label" so it's easier to think of them more as marketers and distributors of the artists' music.

So because you can't afford that car, jacket, or watch, that justifies your stealing it?

I call major BS here.

People show a vast willingness to steal virtual goods because they are virtual. Software, music, photos, movies, it doesn't matter. They justify it because those evil corporations are "rich".

Yeah....

Even if a CD's worth of music would cost $2.50, people would still steal if it's online, because virtual goods should be "free" in their minds. That's what this really is about.

They don't SELL the music here in the shelves to begin with. I downloaded the albums. I then paid an extra $30 shipping cost to get a T-Shirt shipped over here. I'll go attend a concert even if I have to pay a couple hundred in airfare just to get to the thing.

If a CD's worth of music cost $2.50, some people would absolutely still download it, but people who genuinely support the band will not. Plenty of people here download a movie when it comes out and then go buy the DVD later just to have the genuine copy, because paying $20 to watch the movie at the theatre is silly. people download the newest seasons of X because there is no available means to procure "the latest season" without downloading it, and I'm sure that's also true of people in other areas.

Electronics in general are horrendously overpriced. Back in the day when the exchange rate was worse, WoW selling in the US for $49.99 sold for $99.99 here. Nowadays a game that sells for $40 in the US sells here for $108 or $120 or some arbitrary amount of markup to buy it at EB. People are milking the cost of making a CD/DVD and a dying marking system for as much money as they can, and it's partially responsible for why consumers are happy to not pay the price.

So because you can't afford that car, jacket, or watch, that justifies your stealing it?

I call major BS here.

People show a vast willingness to steal virtual goods because they are virtual. Software, music, photos, movies, it doesn't matter. They justify it because those evil corporations are "rich".

Yeah....

Even if a CD's worth of music would cost $2.50, people would still steal if it's online, because virtual goods should be "free" in their minds. That's what this really is about.

They don't SELL the music here in the shelves to begin with. I downloaded the albums. I then paid an extra $30 shipping cost to get a T-Shirt shipped over here. I'll go attend a concert even if I have to pay a couple hundred in airfare just to get to the thing.

If a CD's worth of music cost $2.50, some people would absolutely still download it, but people who genuinely support the band will not. Plenty of people here download a movie when it comes out and then go buy the DVD later just to have the genuine copy, because paying $20 to watch the movie at the theatre is silly. people download the newest seasons of X because there is no available means to procure "the latest season" without downloading it, and I'm sure that's also true of people in other areas.

Electronics in general are horrendously overpriced. Back in the day when the exchange rate was worse, WoW selling in the US for $49.99 sold for $99.99 here. Nowadays a game that sells for $40 in the US sells here for $108 or $120 or some arbitrary amount of markup to buy it at EB. People are milking the cost of making a CD/DVD and a dying marking system for as much money as they can, and it's partially responsible for why consumers are happy to not pay the price.

So what you are saying is that software (and music) is terribly overpriced, and it's being run like a cartel, with insanely high profit margins. Kinda like diamonds. Do you steal those too? If diamonds were run by supply-and-demand, other gemstones would be far far more valuable, as the supply of diamonds sitting in vaults is a lot higher.

I don't disagree that the distributors (and likely your government) are milking digital goods, software, and music for lining their pockets. But that still doesn't justify theft.

I'm trying to get into stock photography. Someone stealing one of my images "because they can't afford it" doesn't fly. If you can't afford the price, find one you can afford.

The reality here is that while the distribution models are outdated, theft won't change them. The only thing that will change them is independent producers using a new model. But, a funny thing... independent bands still sell their music on iTunes for the same $.99.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

So what you are saying is that software (and music) is terribly overpriced, and it's being run like a cartel, with insanely high profit margins. Kinda like diamonds. Do you steal those too? If diamonds were run by supply-and-demand, other gemstones would be far far more valuable, as the supply of diamonds sitting in vaults is a lot higher.

I'm saying that some products being overpriced and/or unavailable through legitimate means to people interested in buying them is partly responsible for the demand to download them. You and I both know that a student (and in my experience, it's mostly students that download a lot) cannot afford the kind of money that it would take to fill up their ipod with Music if they had to buy it at the stores at #30-40 a cd (and in the case I'm referring to, cannot even buy said CD's at the store because they don't exist), but they're still supporters of music and the bands, or the TV shows, or software, or what have you. Whether that's through torrents or other means is kinda irrelevant - a person can acquire music just by stripping the audio out of legitimate Youtube videos if they want to, or just have it on a Youtube playlist if they wanted to.

The fact that latest season TV shows aren't available through ANY legal means for the year or so until they get aired but are still interesting to people means that people will download the TV shows and watch them now.

No, fixing these issues won't stop theft outright, but it will stop some people from pirating products and give them a venue to legitimately buy them. It's just easier for the people in charge to keep things as they are, complain about piracy and drive the price up another 10% to "compensate for lost revenue", which winds up causing the feedback loop of more people pirating, which loops into higher prices, and the cycle goes on.

Now I personally am just practical - I download it to preview it, and if I like it I'll buy the product. If I don't, I won't. It's not comparable to stealing a sweater because lifting a sweater denies the store the ability to sell it to someone else. The end result in my case stays the same - if the artist made a good product, I pay them and support them; if they didn't, I wouldn't have bought it anyway.

I'm happier with variable pricing and no DRM, but I still fail to see what makes one track more valuable, dollar-wise, than any other track. At least I CAN buy them by the track now, and don't have to pay $15 for one song I like and 9 other songs that I either don't care for or dislike outright.

I wish I could find out, somehow, how much iTunes lowered the piracy rate just by going live. I'm also curious as to just how they can come up with anything even resembling an accurate figure for piracy in the first place. I can't even begin to imagine it could be NEARLY as widespread as they claim. It's probably a worse problem now than when they started though, just because I can see people getting all pissed off about the situation and then turning to piracy just as a big EFF YOU to "The Man".

Also, pretty damn glad that SOPA/PIPA are dead in the water, but has anyone heard about the EU's version, ACTA? Apparently that's already passed in a few countries, unless I'm misinformed. I hope I am, any kind of censorship just flat out sucks. Especially in "The Free World".

- I'm not Jesus, but I can turn water into Kool-Aid.- A Sergeant in motion outranks an officer who doesn't know what the hell is going on.- A demolitions specialist at a flat run outranks everybody.

ACTA has been ratified by most EU governments, as far as I know also the US, Indian and a couple of Asian governments, however to become law (in the EU at least) it needs to be signed off on by the European Parliament. The plenary meeting (session) to decide whether to pass it or dismiss it will happen no sooner than June 2012.

ACTA is not just a European version of SOPA. The US government is also a signatory to it and wanted the three strikes/internet cutoff rule in it, which was shot down by the European negotiators.

Of course none of this will do anything, as about 99% of forgeries and pirated IP comes from China, who refused to take part in it, and is part of the reason why this was not written by the WTO.

While providing good coverage, iTunes/Amazon only sell 256 kbps tracks (AAC for iTunes, MP3 for Amazon). Which is, bluntly put, a deal breaker. Lossy compression was OK during the 90s, but that era is long gone.

On the other hand, the lossless-based providers often "struggle" with the coverage. One has to try several of them, sometimes with no luck at all, to get tracks otherwise readily available on iTunes/Amazon. Fortunately, nowadays there are a lot of such providers (a few examples, in no particular order : Bandcamp, GubeMusic, MusicZeit, Addictech, Zunior, HDtracks, Boomkat, iTrax, BLEEP, Qobuz; Digren already linked Magnatune earlier).

However, do keep in mind that most hardcore audiophiles will not ever buy digital music "as is" (i.e. already ripped). They're interested in ripping the albums themselves.